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The faculty, as higher education's most valuable asset, is being dramatically altered. Changes in appointment status drive this alteration, resulting in the essential work of faculty being transformed. Given this change in faculty composition, this study seeks to examine how faculty appointments relate to the production of faculty work in teaching, research, and service. Faculty appointments affect faculty work and it implies that the function of higher education also is altered. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the rise of contingent faculty on the professoriate and higher education.

The National Study of Postsecondary Faculty of 2004 provided data for analyses. There were faculty and instructional staff participants (26,110) from a sample of 980 institutions in the USA and the District of Columbia. The National Center for Education Statistics provides access to its Data Analysis System (DAS) for public use. Basic calculations can result in straight counts, percentages, means, correlation coefficients, and tables. Complex analytic capabilities include covariance using both weighted least squares regression and logistic regression. The DAS was used to examine how changes in faculty composition were related to teaching, research, and service.

Overall, the results indicate that tenured and tenure‐track faculty out‐perform contingent faculty on all major items of teaching, research, and service. With few exceptions, contingent faculty can be viewed as less productive faculty members within the historical function of higher education to promote inquiry and advance the sum of human knowledge, provide general instruction to the students, and develop experts for various branches of the public. If faculty are the heart and health of colleges and universities, the future of higher education may be bleak if the reliance on contingent faculty continues to soar.

The gap between performance levels of tenure/tenure‐track and contingent faculty in teaching, research, and service indicates the quality of higher education is rapidly eroding. This study indicated that the contributions to promoting inquiry and advancing the sum of human knowledge are diminished with increasing use of contingent faculty. It suggests that not only is the work of faculty threatened by a contingent faculty approach but the well‐being of higher education is threatened also.

Overall, tenured and tenure‐track faculty out‐performed other types of faculty appointments according to essential values of faculty – teaching research, and service. Faculty appointments play a significant role in the overall performance of higher education. The function of higher education cannot help but be affected. Society relies on higher education for not only career training but an educated citizenry. If left to contract and part‐time help, it raises concern for the overall well being of society.

Although there is literature discussing concerns about the influx of contingent faculty, there is little, if any, empirical evidence of its impact on the professoriate and its relationship to the overall health and well being of higher education. This study suggests that the traditional framework of faculty work – teaching, research, and service – is being dramatically altered.

Purpose – The purpose of the study was to understand if / how making e-books can facilitate digital literacy skills among teacher candidates.

Design – The research design was a qualitative case study. Data were collected from the student’s e-book, student’s e-book reflective commentary, and questionnaire as well as course reflection. Multimodality and the technological, pedagogical content knowledge (CK) provided the theoretical framework.

Findings – The findings of this qualitative case study indicate that making e-books do facilitate the acquisition of digital literacy and technological pedagogical content knowledge among teacher candidates. In addition, the project promoted transmediation and differentiation of instruction. It facilitated divergent thinking and knowledge of instructional design as well as the affordances and constraints of multimodal tools.

Practical Implications – This study contributes to the literature on e-books and their role in digital literacy development among teacher candidates. The study supports the need to provide teachers with the opportunity for inquiry-oriented and design-based projects that enable them to be knowledge generators. Teachers should be allowed to experiment with digital and multimodal tools, and in the process, create opportunities for transmediation and differentiation of instruction for their students.

In a country where judicial institutions are known to be inefficient and where activists have traditionally not engaged in legal mobilization, what explains the emergence of NGO strategic litigation? The author argues that a change in the legal opportunity structure impacts how activists interact with the legal system. Comparing two states in Mexico, the author demonstrates that the introduction of private prosecution rights opened the door for activists to litigate femicide cases. The emergence of strategic litigation has helped improve compliance with international human rights law and has had a demonstration effect on how to use the law to press for accountability.

Randomised controlled trials identify causal links between variables but not why an outcome has occurred. This analysis sought to determine how psychological factors assessed at baseline influenced response to personalised nutrition.

Web-based, randomised, controlled trial (RCT) was conducted across seven European countries. Volunteers, both male and female, aged over 18 years were randomised to either a non-personalised (control) or a personalised (treatment) dietary advice condition. Linear mixed model analysis with fixed effects was used to compare associations between internal and external health locus of control (HLoC), nutrition self-efficacy (NS-E) and self-report habit index (S-RHI) at baseline (N = 1444), with healthy eating index (HEI) and Mediterranean diet index (MDI) scores between conditions post-intervention (N = 763).

An increase in MDI scores was observed between baseline and six months in the treatment group which was associated with higher NS-E (p < 0.001), S-RHI (p < 0.001) and external HLoC (p < 0.001). Increase in HEI between baseline and six months in the treatment group was associated with higher NS-E (p < 0.001) and external HLoC (p = 0.009). Interaction between time and condition indicated increased HEI scores (p < 0.001), which were associated with higher S-RHI scores in the treatment than control group (p = 0.032). Internal HLoC had no effect on MDI or HEI.

Psychological factors associated with behaviour change need consideration when tailoring dietary advice. Those with weaker habit strength will require communication focussed upon establishing dietary habits and support in integrating advised changes into daily routine. Information on habit strength can also be used to inform how progress towards dietary goals is monitored and fed back to the individual. Those with stronger habit strength are more likely to benefit from personalised nutrition.

This paper aims to present a model of the employability confidence of graduates using employability skills. The purpose of the study is twofold: to identify to what extent self-perceived employability skills (input employability) influence the employability confidence of students/graduates (output employability) and to identify if there are determinant relationships between categories of employability skills.

The researchers for this study built and tested an employability confidence model which included seven constructs. Six focussed on employability skills “professional skills, transferable individual skills, transferable social skills, personal qualities, job seeking skills and corporate work-related skills”, while the last one focussed on employability confidence, seen as the students’/graduates’ self-reliance for getting and maintaining a job. The model was refined using structural equation modelling (with SmartPLS 3 SEM software) and was tested by empirically, analysing a sample of participants studying business.

The results illustrated that four categories of skills (personal qualities, professional skills, job seeking skills and transferable social skills) have a positive and significant influence on students’/graduates’ employability confidence, while individual transferable skills and corporate-related skills do not have a significant influence on employability confidence.

The study contributed to the exiting literature by proposing a new model and measurement instrument that links input employability (individual employability skills) with output employability (employability confidence). The model emphasizes the complete range of individual employability skills, the types of skills that are in the control of the individual. It also contributed by collecting data from a less studied country and region, Romania, that can be considered relevant for Central and Eastern Europe due to similar economic, political, cultural and historical characteristics.

From a practical point of view, the results can be of interest to individuals, to universities and the teaching staff, to organizations and their human resource specialists, and to public administrators, as they all can act to support the development of individual employability skills, thereby helping to increase the employability confidence of individuals.

The study contributed to the exiting literature not only by proposing a new conceptual model to analyse employability confidence but also by collecting data from a less studied region, Romania, that can be considered relevant for Central and Eastern Europe due to similar economic, political, cultural and historical characteristics.

The school-to-prison pipeline is a booming pipeline that is the cause for alarm. Increasingly, this pipeline includes more of Chicano males, and this dynamic is reflected in low rates of high school graduates going to college contrasted with the growing number of Chicanos in the juvenile justice and court systems. This study focuses on the impacts of the school-to-prison pipeline on Chicano students. Furthermore, utilizing a CRT and LatCrit framework, this study centers the experiential knowledge that Chicano students contribute to conceptualizing ways of disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. Themes of this study include the following: (1) Chicano student experiences with the school-to-prison pipeline, (2) innovation of discipline policy and practice, and (3) effective alternative practices to a zero tolerance framework. Through this, Chicano students point to a praxis grounded in community to clear educational pathways and interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline.